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Clive King's Weblog

Pumlumon Challange

Taken a week to write this up, but a lot has been going on work wise in my little world. 2 years in a row the Pumlumon Challenge got fantastic weather. For those who only visit mid-Wales for this event, it is always like that. Claims of average rainfall in the region of 1760mm are just figures picked from the Internet without any factual basis, hence my year round sun tan (not).

The race is part of the Vasque series of Ultra marathons, most of which are mountain based. I did the race last year for the 1st time and this year have done 2 other races in the series.

Wynne, chief organizer managed the most informal start for a race to date. Without any warning or build up, a very informal "off you go" was quite amusing.

I was still tired from the Nant Peris Horseshoe the week before which probably demonstrates to me I have the Peris my all and a week is not enough to recover at these distances which is stating the obvious.
It was hot, I found after about 10 miles I was more tired than I should have been, so I was about 30 minutes slower than last year. Since the start is about a mile as the Red Kite flies from my house, I know the route quite well which really helped on the decent down Drosgol picking up about 10 minutes by following the secret quad bike tracks.

I enjoyed this year's race a lot more and even stopped to take a few pictures on top of Drogsol. Great event, fine organization(could have done with more water available at the bottom of Hengwm) and really good to see some of the people like Nick who I had meet on other races in the series.

A couple of photo's shows the large number of native flies which were not biting inclined. Visit them now before the Wind Turbines scheduled to be installed around Nant-y-Moch are put in place (I feel one only has the right to pass adverse comments on such things when their loft is fully insulated if you get my drift).